All Black teams

New Zealand's high-profile rugby team is called the All Blacks, which has spawned many creative derivatives:
Tall Blacks - the NZ basketball team
Small Blacks - kids' fan club for the All Blacks
Wheel Blacks - NZ wheelchair rugby team (I'm not kidding)
All Whites - NZ soccer team
Black Caps - cricket team
Black Cups - barristas (making lattes, vs Australia's coffeeroos)
Black Sticks - hockey team
Black Sox - softball team
Black Cocks - badminton team
Black Magic - sailboat (America's Cup)
Black Ferns - women's rugby team
Silver Ferns - women's netball team
White Ferns - women's cricket team
White Sox - women's softball team

I have a few ideas for more team names:
• Naming the NZ Karate team would be easy - Black Belts.
• The curling team could be the Black Brooms. (if there is a curling team)
• Perhaps the polo team could be the Black Mallets or the Black Ponies.
• How about a team called Black Balls? Surely there's a "ball" team out there needing a name ... bowling maybe?
• I think the national swimming team should be referred to collectively as Black Water. That sounds ominous, don't you think? Maybe it would even help them beat those dastardly Aussies.
• The possibilities are endless. There could be Black Wickets (croquet) and Black Racquets (tennis) and maybe even the Black Holes (golf).
• While we're at it, the postal service could be the Black Mail and the store selling All Blacks memorabilia could be called the Black Market.
• Hasn't there ever been an All Black named Jack who they called Black Jack? Or one named Smith who was called Black Smith?
• Of course, for all I know, some of these names may already exist.

You probably noticed that most of the women's teams prefer to soften their image compared to the blackness of all those black teams. They go for silver teams and white teams and fern teams. (The fern is a national symbol) What I want to know is why the women's cricket team isn't the White Caps like the men's Black Caps? It seems appropriate since NZ is surrounded by so much water.

Overall, I heartily approve of New Zealand's clever team names. They're so much more creative than Team Canada or the Dream Team.

I have one confession, though. I have to admit that I do like one of Australia's team names. They call their soccer team the Socceroos. Cute.

Samoan neighbours

We were extrememly fortunate in the location of our rental house. It's on the water, and we've got great neighbours! To the left of us are 3 generations of a Samoan family. Loina (35) and her daughter Laei (14) live next door. Loina's mum (Toi), dad (Malanga), and brother (Sa'a) live in the next house. Their cat has become a member of our family too, and acts like he lives here with us.

Toi and Malanga are retired so Toi plays golf (a lot!) and Malanga loves to putter around the garden. He takes care of both his yard and Loina's and it's stunning. Naturally, he's thrilled to have Curt as a neighbour because previous renters didn't always take care of the yard, and you know how much time Curt spends mowing and weeding! Malanga also helps us identify local plants and trees. Apparently we have a grapefruit tree in our back yard, and another one that looks like it has miniature oranges. There's also a banana tree but it's too old to produce fruit or something.

Like many islanders, Toi and Malanga moved to NZ about 40 years ago. They still have a bit of an accent, but their kids and grandkids are pure Kiwi. One of the first things we learned was how to pronounce "Samoa." It's supposed to be SAM-O-uh rather than Suh-MO-uh. There is a large population of Samoans here. New Zealand is an ethnically diverse country. Here's a rough ethnic breakdown:
70% Pakeha (white people)
10% Maori
10% Pacific Islanders (Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, etc.)
10% Asian (China, India, Korea, etc.)

They invited us over for lunch one weekend back in April and fed us heaps of good Samoan food. It was really nice of them to reach out to us and to want to get to know us. Our only previous experience with Samoan culture was through our church in Portland which hosted a Samoan congregation. We often combined services with them and got to hear wonderful Samoan songs and dances, and even scripture read in Samoan.

Loina is a 4th/5th grade teacher at the same primary school she attended while growing up next door. Sadly, Loina and Laei are leaving on Saturday for 3 years in America, where Loina will be teaching in North Carolina and Laei will be finishing high school. They will have a great time but it's sad to see them go because they have been good neighbours. They bring in our mail when we're out of town, and they brought Curt some dinner after his 24-hour flight.

A few weeks ago, there was a BIG farewell party for Loina and Laei and all their friends from school, from the neighbourhood, and from the Samoan community. They rented a hall and there were probably 100 people there! The Samoan men prepared a hangi feast, cooking the food for many hours in a large pit in the ground. The food was yummy and I tried taro for the first time. They assured me it's even better when you put coconut cream over it. Mmmmm.

At the party, a couple of Loina's friends emceed a trivia contest for everyone ... and it was all based on American trivia. Well, you can imagine how happy we were that for once, we might actually know most of the answers! We were sitting at a table with more of our neighbours and they were pleased to have genuine Americans on their team. "How many states are there in the US?" "What's the title of the national anthem?" This is so easy!

Then they started playing short excerpts of old American TV theme songs. I'm afraid we weren't very much help there, but I was amazed at the theme songs our Kiwi teammates knew - Kojak, Benson, Battlestar Galctica? Overall though, our team won the trivia contest by a mile! (or maybe a kilometer?)

Next there was more entertainment: Laei entertained us with some piano pieces, and some other girls danced, and then Malanga got up to lead everyone in the final song/hymn.

Besides the good food, we had a great time, and we got to meet more of the neighbours. We felt honoured to be included.

Home

I've been thinking a lot about "home" recently because I just went home to Bellingham and then I returned home to New Zealand. They both felt like home to me, so I guess in that way I'm pretty lucky - I have 2 homes!

First about my American home:
I spent 2 weeks at my parents' house in Bellingham, Washington, a nice little town of 50,000 on the water near the Canadian border. It was a great town to grow up in, and a wonderful place to raise our 4 sons. It was nice to see the old familiar locations and to remark at all the new developments. We moved away 5 years ago, so obviously things had changed plenty. But overall, I'd still recommend it as a good place to live and I have heaps of happy memories of "home."

Sadly, my dad's health is not very good. He had a stroke July 1 and the right side of his face is droopy. He can still talk and eat but it's not as easy. The stroke has affected his balance too, so he is using a wheelchair when he's up, which isn't often. He sleeps about 20-22 hours every day. With help from my mom, he can get himself into a sitting position on the side of the bed, then he can stand up (with support) and pivot a little and sit himself down in the wheelchair. As you can imagine, it's quite an exertion for both him and my mom.

The most noticeable issue is his right eye. Because that side of his face is weakened, the eyelid is wide open. It gets dried out, and goopy, and worst of all, his cornea gets scratched. So they've started putting a patch on his eye to keep it shut. This seemed like a good idea until we discovered that his eyelid would open up UNDER the patch and proceed to get scratched even more by the patch resting directly on his eyeball. Sheesh. So we tried various solutions including taping it shut first and then putting a patch on. If you've ever scratched your cornea, you know how much it hurts, and when his eye hurts, he's miserable, the poor guy.

I wanted to get him a black pirate eyepatch to go over the white gauze. Especially with the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie showing, I thought it would be very jaunty. The little grandkids would love it! He'd look just like Johhny Depp ... well, maybe not. Alas, my mom nixed that idea.

There's also a struggle to get him to eat and drink enough to sustain his body. Sleeping so much doesn't leave much time for eating, and he doesn't even have much of an appetite. Three bites of a banana is a big meal for him. As you can imagine, he's lost about 15 pounds already and he was already skinny. His legs are like toothpicks.

He is alert and coherent at times. He knew who I was most of the time and knew the other kids and grandkids who were there. He can tell you when something hurts and when he needs to go back to bed and when he's thirsty. But he also gets confused about where he is and what decade he's in. He keeps thinking he's on a trip (to Illinois, I think) and my mom reminds him that he's home in Bellingham. He looks around the familiar bedroom and agrees. But 10 minutes later he thinks he's back in Illinois again. The funniest time was when my mom asked him," Where do you think you are?"
He replied, "In the Marines."
"I don't think they'd let you lie around in bed all day in your pajamas, do you?" she responded.
He looked around the room. "No, I suppose not."

My mom is beginning to take him to physical therapy and speech therapy and occupational therapy this week in the hopes that he can build up his strength. He had a stroke 5 years ago and fought his way back that time, so she's hoping he'll be able to do it again. She is an absolute saint.

Overall though, I had the feeling that this might be the last time I see Dad since I live so far away. So I sure was glad that I came home when I did. It was good to see him while he was relatively alert as opposed to a coma or something like 5 years ago. Mostly, it seemed like we could be at peace with each other. Those of you who know my dad know that he can be a difficult man and that we'd had a contentious relationship. However at this stage, he doesn't have the energy to be mad at me for anything, and he's so harmless and helpless that I'm not threatened by him anymore. All the old animosities seemed to have melted away which felt really good. I'm also really thankful that I had an extra week to sit around and talk with my dear sweet mother. It seemed like I didn't help very much but she sure made me feel appreciated anyway!

As I headed to the airport to return home, I realised how much I'd missed New Zealand. It was such a treat to hear the Kiwi accent when I arrived at the Air New Zealand counter. I was anxious to get back to my husband and my house and my church and the life that we've established there. When I went through customs at the Auckland airport, I didn't get in the line for foreign passports. I got to be in the line for New Zealand passports and residents. It felt good to be home.

Dad has a "minor" stroke, I go visit America

Two days after my job ended, I got a message from my mom that Dad has had a "little" stroke. He's been frail for the last five years, so this was not unexpected. Still, it seems as if his poor old tired body is shutting down. Curt and I will leave tonight. He will stay for one week and I will stay for at least two weeks. (He has to get back to go to work. I don't. Ha.)

It's with a mixture of melancholy and anticipation that we return to the States. Besides being there to help my mom and see my dad, we will get to see our boys! My brother and his family will also be there about the same time, so it seems like a good time to visit.

Overall, it seems fortuitous that I am currently unemployed and available to go visit the States. Perhaps everything is working out for the best.

Last Day

Last day of the term:
I gathered the kids in a big circle this morning and told them we would be saying some goodbyes today.

First of, we all need to say goodbye to Zann because he is going back to China. His one-year visa is up and it's time for him to go home. He's made tremendous progress lately. He started out as a major trouble maker because he didn't understand any English and was bored silly in class all day. So he'd throw paper airplanes or make funny faces or throw things or whatever. The only words he would say were "NO" and "F**". Finally about 10 weeks into the school year, he became known as the expert at Sudoku puzzles which one of the maths groups was doing. They started to ask him for help. He felt important. I brought him a giant interconnected quintuple Sudoko to keep him busy. He brought it back the next morning, solved. I was hoping it would keep him occupied for a few days, but he had finished it in 4 hours! Next, he began to say a few words to me like, "Miss, help me" and he gave me chocolate at lunchtime. I taught him how to play Battleship and he started to make friends. In the last few weeks, he had even started to sit with his reading group on the carpet when it was their turn. On the last day, his group was reading round-robin, and he read his assigned section aloud when it came to his turn. In English! That was huge progress. He'd started out as a major hellion and ended up as a bit of a class mascot. He still didn't do any of the work we did, but somehow we all got used to having him around.

The second goodbye that day was to me. I told them I hadn't been doing a very good job as their teacher and that I was going to be a librarian now. Nobody seemed terribly concerned. Mostly they wanted to know who the new guy was and if he was strict and if he would still give lollies to the winning maths group. (Beats me) A few girls were upset because they genuinely liked me (and my books) and I knew they'd miss me. One of them, Emily, told me later that she almost cried when I made the announcement. If I'd had a room full of kids like Emily, it would have been heaven! But even she knew that this class was not going well.

So that was it. It was pretty anti-climactic.

Our class was having a shared lunch today, the last day of the term. Everybody brought something to share. About 5 people brought bags of potato chips and about 15 people brought CHOCOLATE! They know me so well. The kids didn't know it would be a goodbye lunch for me, but it was.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning out my desk and trying to pack. I also had one more parent conference at 2:00.

At 2:30 I started a goodbye card for Zann which everyone signed including the PE teacher, etc. He liked it. Ellie and Laurie had made a card for me and had gotten it signed by our class plus other students plus other teachers. It was really nice of them to think of that! I would never have expected them to be the ones to do something so thoughtful. Thanks, girls.

At 3:00 the bell rang for the last time and I gave everyone a goodbye hug. A few boys graciously expressed their desire for me to stay. It made me feel good. I had a special farewell with Marcy who is a great kid but is going to need to make good choices in the next few years. Every year, there's always a few special students that I become extra-attached to; who seem to need me more than others. (Last year it was Cassie and Mariah) This year it was Marcy and Patricia. They have great potential, but will have to avoid the pitfalls of their neighbourhood gangs and the temptations of drugs and alcohol. I hope they make it. I hope they keep in touch. My final goodbye was for Emily, who is a miniature version of me. We were both in tears by this time. I feel so bad for deserting her. What a sweetie. She's coming in on Monday to help me pack.

And so ends my adventure as a New Zealand teacher. It didn't go as I'd planned. I cried.

Penultimate Day

Well, I resigned. It's sad. I hate to face the fact that I've failed in this job, but as one teacher friend at church told me, "You didn't fail; the system failed you!" (She's referring to a dodgy issue involving an extra half-day planning per week that the Ministry of Education allows for all overseas teachers. But my school doesn't give it to me. They also don't give their beginning teachers a full-day planning that the Ministry pays for. More about that some other time.)

The second term ended June 30 and that was my last day. Fortunately, here in New Zealand teachers leave in the middle of the year frequently so my resignation was not all that unusual. Heaps of teachers go to places in the northern hemisphere (mainly UK) to teach for a few years and plenty of northern hemisphere teachers come to New Zealand. With the northern school year happening from Sept-June and the southern school year from Feb-Dec, there's constant turnover year round. At my particular school of 15 teachers, I'm the 4th one in two years who left before the year was over. That shows you how common it is. But it also shows you how tough my school is.

My second-to-last day was almost as eventful as the previous post I wrote. Here goes-

First of all, Curt rode off on his bike and took both sets of car keys with him. Remember, he's on a bike. He doesn't need ONE set of car keys, let alone two! Aargh. So I couldn't get to work. I finally got a hold of him 40 minutes later and he borrowed a friend's car (thanks, Jon) and drove home to deliver me the keys. I thought about having my sweet neighbour lady drive me to school, and I'm sure she would have been glad to ... but I needed my car at 10:30 to go to a job interview for a school library position. Meanwhile, I called my school to let them know I'd be late and that someone should unlock my classroom and watch over the kids while they change into their PE clothes for aerobics. I arrived right as the bell rings. No time to catch my breath, just hit the ground running.

I had already arranged for 2 other teachers to watch over my class while I went to the interview. But Maria, who was going to watch them after recess, was home sick so I scrambled to get a third person to help out instead. My first helper arrived right on time and my kids were playing Bingo with Maori numbers so they were behaving pretty well. (I had a Maori student call out the numbers because I can't pronounce anything "right" in English, let alone Maori!) I raced out the door and drove to my librarian interview, which lasted about 40 minutes. I came back to find my class in the hands of Maria's reliever (substitute) instead of the third helper I'd recruited. Oh well. At least someone was covering for me.

So far, so good. There have been a number of glitches already but it's worked out.

Then about 1:30, Tim got indignant about being told three times to stop talking, and threw a chair through the window. OK, it didn't exactly go though the window. It's more like it hit it and bounced off. But it broke the window big time. There was broken glass inside and outside. I sent Patricia to go get a principal or deputy principal. They both came and took Tim away. Later, they came to get a few more students/witnesses to tell them what happened. Meanwhile, I was still trying to carry on with the reading groups on the carpet at the back of the room and make sure nobody went over near the broken glass. At least they got REAL quiet after the glass shattered all over.

Eventually the principal sent Tim back in to apologise to the class for losing his temper. He will have to pay for the new window. And he will spend tomorrow in the office doing work all alone instead of in here with the rest of the class. He's actually thrown his chair once before, when I confiscated his orange-coloured drink to see if it was "fizzy." Carbonated drinks aren't allowed and teachers just pour them out. When I took his drink that day, he threw his chair and stormed out of the room. He walked all the way to the back of the property and started heading out the gate as if he was going home. But he came back about 15 minutes later. Anyway, it wasn't his first chair-throwing incident. Then there was also the chair-throwing incident with Zann and Mitch, but that will story have to wait, too.

School finally ended at 3:00 but I had to stay till 5:00 for a parent conference. We had conferences Tues. and Wed. earlier this week, but one mom couldn't come then so she came today at 5:00. We finished at 5:30. Everyone else in the school was already gone. I was the last one out. I locked the doors and set the alarm. It was dark and lonely. It had NOT been a good day.

On the way home, I realised I should be thankful that Tim threw a chair through the window today because it reminded me why I was quitting. Ever since I submitted my resignation, I've been going back and forth, wondering if it was the right thing to do, feeling guilty for abandoning the kids and deserting my principal. But having a day like this reinforced my decision. I'm still sad and I still feel like I failed, but I think I made the right decision anyway. Tomorrow I finally get to tell the students that I'm leaving. It will be my last day, which may be even sadder.

PS - I didn't get the librarian job.